


One Day [Discontinued until ???]

by TeagueBlack



Category: Pocket Monsters: Sun & Moon | Pokemon Sun & Moon Versions
Genre: (probably), Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Chatting & Messaging, Coincidences, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Older Characters, Post-Graduation, pokemon are animals in this setting, they always seem to miss each other, universe is pretty sick of them, why are they like this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-03-27 09:30:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13878063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeagueBlack/pseuds/TeagueBlack
Summary: (EDIT: I've been busy. And a lot of things have happened. I wanted to rewrite chapters 2-4, but I seem to have lost my motivation.I love Haudion, I do. But I just can't seem to remember why I wanted to write this any more.I might come back to this, so I'll leave it up for now.)"Why didn't I meet you sooner?"Hau and Gladion meet on a hill, after a university graduation party and spend the night talking about their future. Tomorrow, they're going their separate ways - they have things to see, people to meet, dreams to follow. Maybe it won't work out completely. Maybe they have to learn and unlearn, and try to forget.Yet they'll always remember the one day that they met.(Or, the fic where two idiots don't realise they're in love until they're halfway across the world from each other.)





	1. if you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is partly based off David Nicholls' 2009 novel, One Day, and partly based off a roleplay I had with a friend whom I shall address as Lum. I haven't actually read the novel, but I do know of some of the events in it. Of course, I will deviate from the novel from time to time...if I didn't, I might as well have copied it and edited the names.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They meet, Hau yells, Gladion is a grump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter comes from "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes. There's a brief reference to it in here, so go ahead and put on that song while reading this.

After all those years of studying, maybe showing up to lectures 15 minutes late with malasadas, pouring Monster Energy into his coffee, and watching his roommate Sun chug endless cans of Red Bull while churning out essays at 3 am...Hau was finally graduating university. Like most others, he received his diploma with dignity and joy, to the point where he was practically vibrating from how excited he was. Or maybe he'd had too much caffeine again...

He made sure to grab a quick selfie with the dean of his faculty, just for the memories.

The university was kind enough to hold an official graduation party for all the students at a huge, fancy hotel that was located near a hill. Being in a room full of people, however, was quite suffocating, and as the party began degenerating into something less official, Hau, having had more drinks than he could count, snuck out and headed outside, hoping to get some fresh air. Naturally, he decided to climb the hill - hills were meant for climbing, and rolling down while screaming one's head off.

At the top of the hill was a large tree, which made Hau think of it as a wishing tree. But beneath the tree was something he wouldn't have dreamt of wishing for unless he was drunk off his ass and feeling too lonely for his hands to satisfy him.

It was a young man, sitting with his legs stretched out, hands planted firmly in the grass, while he stared up at the sky, even though there was nothing but darkness because light pollution meant that no stars ever got to shine. Upon seeing Hau, though, the other male began gently scooting away from him.

"Hey," Hau slurred, and belatedly decided he'd had too much to drink. "Didn't see you around campus. Which classes did you take?"

Maybe he had seen the other guy somewhere before. Was he even sure it was a guy? The drinks probably had messed with his vision a bit.

Or maybe he was hallucinating.

"Or...are you a ghost? Or an angel? I dunno, but you're pretty, so I don't know how I never saw you around..." Great, now he was rambling.

 The young man scowled a bit. “You must’ve had too much to drink. Is this normal for you?” He tilted his head towards him, deciding to keep his classes a secret.

"Huh? No. But anyway, I'm Hau. And I got a diploma in-"

"I don't really want to know, okay?"

"Oh. Okay then."

Silence fell over them, before Hau spoke again.

“You know, tomorrow, everyone’s going their separate ways. And that’s so scary, because up till today, we weren’t alone. We had each other. But now…” he trailed off, unable to put the rest of his feelings into words.

At this point, the other male decided he might as well speak. “I never had close friends in uni, so at this point, I don’t really care that I might be alone tomorrow.” He wondered why he was even bothering to communicate with a stranger who was quite possibly intoxicated, but he ventured forth with a question anyway.

“What are you going to do now? Or tomorrow, at least.”

Hau’s eyes lit up, and he grinned impishly. “I’m gonna travel the world! I wanna meet new people, see lots of new things - there’s so much out there!” And he reached out for the sky, for the stars that twinkled softly in the sky, holding all his hopes and dreams.

Even if the stars were technically already dead, the other man wryly thought, before he heard Hau ask, “You probably have something you wanna do too, right?”

“Ah…”

“C’mon, tell me.” A little prompting was all he needed.

“I want to make a difference in any way I can.” The words felt strange on his tongue. “I want to make this world a little bit better.” Great, now he sounded idealistic, foolish even, like he’d had his head in the clouds the whole time. He momentarily regretted ever speaking.

“You can definitely do it!” Hau’s grin was blindingly bright, and the other man felt the urge to shield his eyes from it. “No, not ‘you can’...you will! I believe in you!” He stood up, holding his hands above his head, and yelled towards the sky. “WE’RE GONNA MAKE IT! I’ll travel the whole wide world, and-”

He paused and looked down. “What’s your name?”

A scoff, and then a chuckle, escaped the young man. “I’m not telling you until you tell me yours. How did you even forget to introduce yourself?”

“Oh. I’m Hau! Like the flower, you know? One of the species of hibiscus?”

“Hm. Gladion.”

“Alrighty!” And Hau stared up at the sky again, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled even louder this time. “Gladion’s gonna change the world! He’s gonna make a difference and he’ll make it better than it ever was!”

Gladion, at this point, felt both secondhand embarrassment and an irrational urge to sock Hau in the face. But the declaration was, at the very least, heartwarming. He allowed himself a smile.

Then it started to fucking rain. Curse their luck.

 

* * *

 

Hau was dancing around, enjoying the raindrops that poured down, not caring that he could possibly fall ill.

“Let’s go find shelter. If there’s lightning, this tree won’t save us,” Gladion muttered as he got to his feet. Seizing Hau by the arm, he tried to drag him down the hill. Unfortunately for them, as they were halfway down, Hau tripped, and both of them ended up rolling the rest of the way down. It was lucky that the hill was mostly grass and soil, with very few rocks due to how maintained it was, and neither of them were seriously injured.

“Perhaps whatever god there is up there took pity on his idiocy…” The blond male was seriously considering homicide.

“That was fun!” Hau took no notice of the rain pelting his face. “I could stay out all night with you.”

“How about stay in, instead?” came the reply in a very, very unamused voice.

“Ooh, okay then. Let’s go find shelter.” Grasping Gladion’s hand, he dragged him off, while singing the chorus of some cheesy old song about pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.

“That song is about a couple getting bored of each other.”

“Killjooooy. It had a happy ending, right? And it’s catchy!”

They ended up at a bus stop, watching the rain pour down while they sat on the benches, panting heavily from all that running. Gladion was the first to speak.

“Dear lord. My arm hurts from you dragging me. And who said you could hold my hand?”

“Haha, sorry. And you let me hold it all the way here anyway! Sorry for making you run though.”

“Why did you even do that? We’ve known each other for like, twelve minutes.”

“I dunno. I really don’t know…” The chirpy boy’s voice faltered, and he became unusually serious. “Will you stay here with me, the whole night? I mean, it might be the last time we ever see each other.”

“And why should I care?”

“I could die tomorrow. I could die on the way to the airport, or I could get on the plane and then it could crash.” He turned his head to face Gladion. “And then you’d be the last person who ever heard me say, ‘I could die tomorrow.’ And that’s scary.”

“...I could die tonight,” Gladion huffed, as a sudden coldness came over him. What the heck was Hau saying? “I could walk into the road. Get hit by a car. I could’ve died when your drunk-as-fuck ass tripped while we were going down that hill - my neck could’ve been snapped, you might have cracked your head against something...heck, we both could have died.”

“Yeah, maybe they’d find our bodies in the morning and speculate that we were lovers. Hehe.”

“...again, we just met. God, you’re a clingy drunk.”

“Eh? ‘m not drunk.”

“Sure you aren’t.” Ignoring him for now, Gladion pulled out his phone and browsed a bit.

Moments later, he felt a weight on his shoulder, and sighed. “Please wake up.”

Hau answered him with a muffled snore. For a moment, the blond was tempted to leave him here. Why should he care about this guy, anyway? They were strangers to each other. All they did was fall down a hill and run through the rain. And it was Hau’s fault, mostly.

Yet he couldn’t bear to walk away.

“...idiot.”

 

* * *

 

A few hours later, Sun found them at the bus stop, Hau snoring away, Gladion half-asleep as he read some really edgy poetry on his phone.

“Oh, uh. Hi. That’s my friend right there…”

Gladion blinked. “You look familiar.”

“Yeah, so do you. You kinda look like a girl I know…? Her name is Lillie.”

“That’s my sister. Are you two her friends? God, he’s clingy.” Gladion tried to get Hau’s head off his shoulder, but found that the younger male wasn’t budging.

“Uhhh. Hau gets like that sometimes, y’know?” Sun tried as well, and eventually he was able to lift Hau off and support him. “When he went missing, we all panicked to hell and back. Oh, I remember you now! Gladion, right?”

Nodding, the blond male scratched his cheek and sighed. “Just...tell them he might have a few scrapes. He fell down a hill.” Never mind that he fell down the same hill himself.

Sun paled, and Gladion almost laughed at how much the other’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. Instead, he let his mind drift to his earlier conversation with Hau.

“Hey, is he going to the airport tomorrow?”

“Yeah. He’s got a flight to Hawaii, going to see his family. How do you know?”

“Well...he mentioned wanting to travel the world, and said something about an airport.” Best to leave out the part where they talked about dying.

A grin slowly came to Sun’s face. “Wanna see him off at the airport? Lillie’s gonna be there too.”

“And why are you inviting me? I’m not exactly his friend, unlike you.”

“Well, look here. Hau might as well have been a stranger to you, given that you didn’t seem to recognise him as a friend of Lillie’s. But you let him doze off on you and didn’t leave him by himself, yeah? I’d say that makes you a bit of a friend now. And a friend of his is a friend of mine!”

Gladion officially decided that his sister’s friends were nutheads.

“...sure, I’ll come. What time is the flight?”

 

* * *

 

The next morning, at the airport, Hau was crying and hiccuping wildly, hugging Sun, Lillie and their other friend Moon, while Gladion awkwardly stood to the side and watched him bawl like a baby. What he did not expect, however, was for Hau to come up to him next and throw his arms around him, causing him to freeze in shock. 

“Thanks for not leaving me alone last night,” he whispered to the still-shocked male. “I don’t remember what I said, but...but...I felt like I was able to say stuff that I’d been thinking of for a long, long time…”

Gladion sighed, carefully patting Hau’s back. “Let go or you’ll miss your plane.”

After Hau had departed, Lillie turned to Gladion with a curious expression. “You didn’t even know him until yesterday, Gladion. What made you decide to come?”

A pause, and then a shrug. “I guess he’s just the kind of guy who makes friends easily.”

He turned away, failing to notice two things: the way Lillie’s lips curved up into a smile as soon as he said that, and the fact that he’d basically admitted to being Hau’s friend now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neither Dexter nor Emma's characters completely suit Hau and Gladion, yes? Which is why I have to alter the events of the story quite a bit.


	2. orange boxers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladion video calls Hau, and accidentally sees his undies. That's a totally normal thing between friends, I guess. It could be worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you wanna have a song to listen to while you listen to this...then try "Groovy Underwear" by Pansy Division. Heh.
> 
> Since they're using a messaging and calling app, their messages will be in bold. 
> 
> Yeah, I like LINE. It's cute.

It had been a couple of days since Gladion had seen Hau off at the airport. Within those two days, he had managed to obtain Hau's number from his sister, and had requested that she let Hau know of his contact details too.

Which was why he received a text from Hau on a communication app known as LINE. After all, it was cheaper to use this app compared to regular texting and calling – overseas charges were no joke.

**"Gladion! Hi! How are you??"** said the message, followed by a cute animated sticker of a mouse waving.

Gladion snickered. Normally, he didn't care for the stickers in LINE, but seeing Hau use one made him feel abnormally happy. Much to his horror, he found himself wanting to use a sticker as well.

**"Doing just fine. I hope you are too. What's it like in Hawaii?"** His message seemed a little stiff and formal, but he was like that no matter who he texted.

**"Great!! I came back home to a rainbow! Lemme send a pic!!"** After a few rainbow stickers, Hau finally sent over a slightly blurry picture of a rainbow.

**"You suck at taking pictures."** He couldn't resist telling him that.

**"Meanie!"** A sticker of a crying koala popped up after that message.

**"How many stickers do you even have?"**

**"Way too many. Got all the free packs!!! Might have paid for some lol"**

The blond male cringed a bit at the lack of the full stop, but decided to let it slide. He glanced over at the floor, where his (rather large) dog, Silvally, had just finished eating. Snapping a quick picture of Silvally, he sent a message asking if Hau wanted to see a dog.

**"YOU HAVE A DOG?!"** came the response, and what followed was a flurry of frantic messages.

**"SHOW ME THE DOGGO!"**

**"WANNA SEE DOGGO"**

**"GOOD DOGGO????"**

He sighed and replied, **"Quit spamming me, here's your 'doggo'."** And he sent the photo of Silvally.

For a brief moment, his phone began to lag from the vast amount of messages and stickers that flooded his screen after that photo. Things like **"HE'S SO CUTE AND FLUFFY"** and **"I LOVE HIM"** made up the content of the messages, while the stickers were mostly heart-eyed animals.

**"You're acting like Silvally when I give him his favourite toy."** Gladion was a little exasperated by that.

A sticker of a rabbit named Cony laughing was sent – Cony being one of the mascots for this messaging app – before Hau followed up with a quick apology and a request to use the video chat function. Well, why not? Gladion hit the 'call' icon and selected 'video call'.

As soon as they connected, Hau's smiling face appeared on Gladion's screen, and the blond male was thankful that there was minimal lag (Skype's shitty lag came to mind, and he pushed it aside). Hau waved, greeting him.

"Hey! I'm in my old family home, in the room I grew up in! My family fixed it up for me before I came back!" The camera view was swapped in order to let Hau show Gladion the room.

It had a very warm, nostalgic feeling to it, which was odd considering that he'd never even seen the room before, let alone been in it. He supposed it was the colours having a soothing effect on him.

The camera was suddenly swapped back to Hau, but the way it was angled allowed Gladion to catch a glimpse of the other male's boxers, half-hidden under his oversized T-shirt.

"Hau- why aren't you wearing pants?"

"Eh? I forgot."

Gladion briefly allowed himself to think of this as a very poor attempt at seduction, before shaking his head. No, Hau would never do that. Too innocent for that. Still, he asked, "What colour are they?"

"Orange!" Hau lifted his shirt a bit, revealing bright orange boxers with a pattern of mice and cheese all over it. Obnoxiously bright orange, Gladion noted.

"Why mice?" Those boxers were, for lack of a better word, cheesy. Or cartoony. Way too ridiculous – Hau would never get laid if anyone else laid eyes on those boxers.

_Woah, wait._ Anyone else? That made it sound like he'd fuck him. Wait, no, he shouldn't think like that about a friend-

"It's a gag present from a cousin! Mice are cute, aren't they?"

Gladion tried to control his smile and failed miserably. "What are you, seven?"

"On a scale of one to ten? I guess so. Hehe."

The blond male figured Hau was way more than a seven, but those boxers were pushing down the rating a little. Maybe if they were gone, then…oh, no. No no no. He shook his head and decided to say, "We just met, you shouldn't be showing me your boxers. This isn't Omegle."

"So if we met on Omegle, you'd be fine with seeing them?" Hau had a devious little smile on his face.

"…I would disconnect immediately."

"Ruuuude!"

Exhaling, Gladion mused, "I'm wasting my life away, aren't I? Just sitting here, doing nothing in particular…"

"It's not wasting your life away if you're happy. You have your doggy and Lillie. I have my family and friends and my mouse. And we have each other. So…are you happy?"

Seeing Hau's earnest face, Gladion couldn't help but reply, "I…I guess so."

"Good! And if you weren't happy, that's okay too. I'll always be here to make you happy."

"I-idiot. Don’t say such sappy things, we aren't even close…!"

"You're blushing? Did no one ever say that to you? Oh no! Then I'll have to say super special nice things to you all the time now!"

Gladion flushed completely. "Shut up!"

Hau merely laughed. "You love me! FULL HOMO!"

"QUIET!"

Hau then heard Hala downstairs, calling him for dinner, and Gladion could faintly hear him too. A warm, loving voice…

Kind of like Hau's. Maybe that was where he got it from. It also vaguely reminded him of his own dad.

He remembered a time, when he was still small, and Lillie was too young to remember, that his dad would come home from work and cheerfully call his name, and he would yell "Daddy!" and run to him and throw his arms around him. But Mohn had disappeared while on some expedition many years ago…and he hadn't heard that kind of voice again, except maybe from Lillie when he wasn't distancing himself from her. The police had all but declared him dead, and his grieving mother had thrown herself into her work…

And his home had been quite devoid of love after that.

He pushed aside the memories and gave Hau a little smile, as Hau told him that he'd call him another time because he had to go eat now.

"See you," he whispered.

"See ya!" Hau exclaimed, waving at him. "Love you."

Gladion froze. "What?"

"Oh! I…force of habit, haha…"

There was a mild feeling of disappointment. There was also a mild feeling of 'liar, you totally mean it'.

Silvally came over, poking its big head into view and barking, before skittering off, claws echoing on the floor. Hau squealed and waved at Silvally, causing Gladion to feel a twinge of jealousy, before realising how ridiculous that was.

"So, talk to you soon. Bye again," Gladion finally told him.

"Bye!~"

As they ended the video call, he glanced around the house and decided it felt a lot emptier than it used to…

Over on Hau's end, the cheerful young man pulled on his pants and giggled as he went downstairs. He didn't actually forget his pants earlier; he just wanted to know what Gladion would say when he saw him in his boxers.

Really, he didn't yet understand what he felt for Gladion, but maybe he would. Soon.

Hopefully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Groovy Underwear is totally inappropriate since Gladion and Hau don't do anything remotely sexy, but...ehhh, the song is so catchy!


	3. pain au chocolat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hau's French is terrible, and Gladion might be somewhat...glad about that. Unfortunately, these two are equally thick-headed when it comes to the languages of love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the ultra shitty French and Olelo Hawai'i. I'm trying, I swear. Neither of those are my mother tongues, I speak Mandarin...
> 
> I'm also sorry for the shortness of the chapter and the dialogue.
> 
> Want a song to listen to while reading this? Try "Next To Me" by Double Or Nothing.

A year had passed by since the day of their graduation.

While Hau and Gladion had always kept in touch, via LINE messages and calls - both voice and video - they still felt so far away. So damn far away. It didn’t help that Hau had been travelling around, never seeming to settle down, always so eager to see everything there was to see in the whole wide world; on the other hand, Gladion was perfectly contented to live a quiet life, spending time with Silvally and working on important writing projects, while finding a way to make ends meet via odd jobs here and there.

But circumstances had forced the latter to move back to France.

“So I’m in France now,” Gladion stated, gazing at the younger male on his phone screen. “Specifically, Lyon. I grew up here, and…” he paused for a moment, unsure if he should continue, but seeing Hau’s innocent, wide-eyed stare made him press on. “It’s close to the care centre where Mom is. She’s getting a bit better. She goes out in the sun.”

He hadn’t been keen on revealing details of his family, but in the end, he’d opened up and admitted to Hau that Lusamine wasn’t the most stable, even though so many years had passed since the incident that took Mohn away, and Lillie had agreed with him to send her to a care centre that was best suited to her needs. They had chosen it carefully, and Lillie had decided to volunteer her services there so she could spend more time with their mother.

“I’m in France, too,” Hau finally told him. “Paris, though. I shouldn’t really have come here, there’s too much bird poop, and it isn’t as romantic as it’s supposed to be.”

  
“At least you didn’t step into dog shit...yet.”

“Believe me, I nearly did. And my French is terrible, I can’t pronounce anything, and waiters give me really dirty looks because I’m probably sullying their native language. It’s your native language too, right?”

Gladion nodded, allowing a small smile to cross his face. “Want some help? I’ll translate whatever you want me to.”

“Then...then...how do you say ‘I want a chocolate croissant’?”

The older male choked back a laugh. “Are you that desperate for one?”

“I’ve been living off supermarket and convenience store food! I’m too intimidated to step into a restaurant or café!” Hau whined and pretended to punch the screen.

“Alright, alright.” Muffling a giggle, Gladion finally told him, “You have to be polite. Open with ‘ _Bonjour_ ’, and then ‘ _Je voudrais_   _u_ _n pain au chocolat, s'il vous plaît_ ’. Then they’ll ask if that’s all, and, assuming you’re not ordering anything else, you’ll go, ‘ _Oui, merci_ ’ when the waiter asks if that’s all you’re ordering. You do know that, at least, right?”

Hau stared blankly. “You had me lost after ‘ _Bonjour_ ’. Face it, I’ll never speak French between anyone’s legs.”

“Hawaiian, then?”

“Ōlelo Hawaiʻi?”

“Yeah, that. Talk to me in that, I’ll talk to you in French. Just for fun, alright?”

“We are gonna have the most confusing conversation ever,” Hau chuckled.

Gladion just smiled and began, though he spoke way too fast for Hau to even catch anything. The only thing that he pronounced clearly was “ _J’adore ton sourire_.”

“I kinda heard something that sounded like that Dior perfume,” Hau remarked.

“I wasn’t talking about the perfume. And it’s kind of...your turn now?”

“...I don’t speak it much, alright? Tutu spoke to me in a mix of both Hawaiian and English, and we don’t even use it all that often - the most commonly-spoken words are like, _aloha_ , _mahalo_ , _haole_ \- that last one would probably refer to you, by the way…”

Raising an eyebrow, the blond wondered if ‘ _haole_ ’ was a bit insulting, but he let it slide. “Then say something else. Like one of those long phrases.”

Rolling his eyes, Hau turned away from the phone camera to think for a bit, before he faced Gladion, completely serious. Heck, the intense look on his face made Gladion’s heart skip a beat.

“ _Nau ko`u aloha ,_ _no kau a kau._ ”

“...what even was that?”

“Gah, it probably doesn’t even make sense, anyway. Maybe I said it wrong.”

 

* * *

 

Deciding to continue speaking French, but mildly embarrassed at what he was saying, Gladion mumbled a few insults under his breath, but threw in some nice little things too. Hau responded in the same manner. In fact, for a good five minutes, all they did was insult and compliment each other to hell and back. Eventually, though, they fell silent, gazing at each other through their screens.

“I have to go. I’m meeting Lillie, and we might go to see Mother.”

“Okay. I...remembered an old proverb that Tutu told me, way too many times. Wanna hear?”

“Sure.” Gladion allowed a soft smile to settle on his face.

“ _` A `_ _ohe loa i ka hana a ke aloha._ ”

“...am I not allowed to know the meaning of that?”

Hau beamed. “Go find out yourself.”

“Then I’ll leave you with this. _Tu me rends heureux._ Don’t worry, it isn’t any complicated proverb - that kind of thing would go way over your head.”

“HEY!” Now Hau was pouting.

“What are you, three?”

“Bitch, I might be.”

Pretending to be appalled by the cuss, Gladion put a hand to his heart. “Bless your heart, good sir. I might have to wash out your mouth with a bar of the finest soap France has to offer.”

“I’d rather eat a Tide Pod. Take that fancy soap and shove it up your ass.”

They both broke out into snickers and ridiculous laughter. One moment they were saying such sappy things, and the next, they were like this.

“...seriously. I’ll miss you. Can I catch the next flight out to Lyon?” Hau asked.

“Don’t do that. Enjoy your stay in Paris. Goodbye.”

“Ooh, lemme try to say goodbye in French. _Au revoir_ , my sweet French prince.”

“God, your pronunciation is awful. Never speak French again.”

Hau laughed, Gladion put a hand over his mouth to muffle his own giggle (really, a giggle?) and they disconnected the call.

 

* * *

 

A few days after that, Lillie showed up at Gladion’s apartment with paper bags full of _pains au chocolat_.

“Why’d you buy that many for?” He frowned a bit.

“Blame Hau! He bought so many for you, though he said that was all he could order-”

“HAU?! You saw Hau? I thought he was in Paris!”

“He flew to Lyon to see you, but you happened to be out this morning and he couldn’t contact you, and he was searching for you everywhere- actually, I told him to wait here, but he insisted that I pass you these because he had to rush off to catch a train to Versailles…”

Gladion sighed and took one of the bags from her. “Thank you.”

He warmed up one of the chocolate croissants in the microwave, and sat at the table out on his balcony to eat. The pastry was perfect, just the right amount of flaky, and the warm chocolate inside brought him some comfort.

Underneath the sweetness of the chocolate, though, there was a tinge of bitterness. He supposed it was the fact that it was dark chocolate, but he couldn’t help feeling that this was due to the fact that he missed Hau.

And how he missed him, missed his chance to see his face in person.

What he felt was _regret_.

At the same time, far away and on a train bound for Versailles, Hau leaned against the window and felt the same way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well...let's give the rough translation here.
> 
> J’adore ton sourire = I love your smile  
> Aloha = General greeting, used to express love, affection, etc...a lot of things.  
> Mahalo = Thank you. You might see these on bins in Hawaii.  
> Haole = Something like 'foreigner'. Not a good thing, though Hau isn't trying to be that rude to Gladion.  
> Nau ko`u aloha = My love is yours  
> No Kau a Kau = For eternity  
> `A `ohe loa i ka hana a ke aloha = Distance is ignored by love. An old Hawaiian proverb.  
> Tu me rends heureux = You make me happy.


	4. heartfelt wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wish that stretches from Japan to France, and now, they finally start to realise their feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy. Sorry for not updating, I've started a part-time job, been kind of sick, and...yeah I've been procrastinating. Lazing around. No excuse for that.
> 
> If you want music to listen to while reading, give "I Believe" by Yamaguchi Yuko a try.

“Japan?” Gladion blinked. Somehow, another year had passed without him realising.

Another year where he hadn’t had the time to meet Hau in person.

“Yeah.” Hau exhaled, and his breath condensed in the cold air. Despite him arriving in Japan in the last week of March, and bringing warm clothing, he was still shivering from the cold. It was probably due to the wind, which made the weather feel colder than it actually was - if the temperature readings were accurate. “I hope it’ll get warmer, it’s supposed to be spring now.”

“What are you even doing there, though?”

“It’s gonna be sakura season! I wanna see those cherry blossoms in person, seeing them in pictures isn’t enough for me.”

“Mmhm. I don’t see any of them around you, though...come to think of it, where exactly are you?” The blond male raised an eyebrow. “All I see are...normal trees. And people. And...are those barrels?”

“Yup!” came the reply, as Hau switched the camera view and turned so Gladion could see the barrels better. “I’m walking into the Meiji Shrine in Shibuya! Those barrels of sake were donated to the shrine. Sun told me that when we were planning our trip and looking up pictures of it.”

“Wait, Sun’s there with you?”

“Well, he _was_ , because I’m staying at his apartment for this trip, but I’ve kinda...lost him.”

“Go find him! Wandering off by yourself isn’t a good idea, especially in a foreign country!” Gladion found that he sounded like a worried parent, and that startled him. “Sun’s a local, right?! All the more you should’ve stuck with him!”

Hau chuckled, finding that it was rather endearing, the way Gladion was worrying and fussing over him. “Calm down, I’m sure he’ll find me...soon. I ran all the way in here out of excitement, so he might be really far back and just taking his own sweet time to walk here. So I’ll wait next to these barrels.” He lightly hummed, playing with a lock of hair, before he asked, “By the way, how’s life treating you?”

“...normal. There’s nothing else to say about it.” As Gladion paused to think of what to say next, Silvally jumped into his lap and shoved its big face towards his phone screen. “Woah! Down, boy!”

Silvally curiously sniffed at the phone screen, while Hau giggled and cooed at him. Suddenly cold hands grabbed his face from behind, and he let out a scream, flailing wildly and causing the phone camera to violently shake. Gladion yelled in response, nearly falling off his chair, until he heard snickering and complaining, and realised it was Sun who had done that.

“Y-your hands! They’re freezing!” Hau whimpered, while Sun calmly stated, “That’s what you get for running off without me.”

“Hey, Sun,” Gladion coughed, trying to pretend he hadn’t been _that_ worried about Hau.

“Hey, Gladion.” Sun took the phone from Hau and sighed. “Hau, you didn’t charge your phone last night? You’re on 20% right now.”

“Huh?! Oh, craaaap!” Hau fumbled for his portable charger and found that he’d left it at Sun’s apartment. “Suuun! Lend me your charger!”

“Later, you dummy. I’m using it now.”

Hau grabbed his phone back and whimpered, “Guess I’ll see you later then, Gladion.”

“See you.” Gladion fought back the urge to laugh. Hau sometimes behaved like a child, but it was cute nonetheless.

About twenty minutes later, Gladion’s phone beeped, notifying him of a message; opening the message revealed it to be a picture of Hau, sent from Sun’s phone. Hau’s phone had probably run out of battery at this point.

In the picture, Hau was holding one of those small wooden plaques that could be found at Japanese shrines - _ema_ , he vaguely recalled. The bright smile on Hau’s face made Gladion subconsciously smile too. ‘That smile is infectious,’ he thought to himself, and tried to will himself to stop smiling. He failed.

Zooming in on the photo, Gladion tried to read the words that had been written on the _ema_ . He struggled, because Hau’s handwriting was more like chicken scratches than anything and the zooming kind of blurred the photo a bit, but then Sun sent a second photo, which was of the _ema_ hung up on a board. A third picture was sent, and it was of Hau in front of the huge ‘walls’ full of _ema_ that surrounded a supposedly divine tree, but Gladion scrolled back to the second photo to read what Hau had written on that _ema_.

_‘I wish I could meet Gladion again, face to face. I hope whatever God is out there will hear my prayer. Love, Hau.’_

Gladion wished he could stop smiling, but his grin was so wide that it hurt. He recorded a voice message for Hau to listen to when he next opened LINE.

 

* * *

 

As soon as he got his hands on Sun’s phone charger, Hau turned his phone back on and found the voice message waiting for him. With a grin, he pressed play, and Gladion’s voice greeted him.

“We’ll meet up again, don’t you worry about that, you dummy.”

God, that made him want to jump through the phone screen and see his face again. Sure, he saw it every time they had video calls on LINE, like they’d been having for the past two years, but...it wasn’t the same.

“Someone has a cruuuuush,” Sun said in a sing-song manner.

“I don’t, Sun. We’re just friends, just like you and me!”

“Sure, but remember that one time we were drunk and made out?”

Hau groaned. “I don’t want to remember. That was one time. One. Time.”

“You had a crush on me back then, and now you have a crush on hiiiim.”

“Quit teasing me! And I never ever had a crush on you!”

“So you admit you like him.” Sun hooked an arm around Hau’s neck and leaned in a bit. “Am I right? You two should have totally hooked up on grad night. What I’m saying is: _you should’ve fucked him._ ”

Hau was positive that his face had turned at least a shade darker, due to how intensely he was blushing. “We aren’t like that! I...I just like his company and I wish I’d met him before that night...I wish I’d gotten to know him in person over the years, instead of over video calls, y’know?”

“Fine, fine.” Sun let go of him. “So let’s send him some pictures of you, alright?”

“What-”

A devious grin spread across Sun’s face. “I promise nothing perverted.”

 

* * *

 

About a week later, April had finally arrived, and with it came the full bloom period of the cherry blossoms on Yoshinoyama, one of the most cherry blossom-viewing spots. And that was exactly where Sun took Hau. Of course, Hau video called Gladion on LINE again.

“Gladion, look! It’s the cherry blossoms! They’re everywhere!”

All around Hau, there were pink clouds of blossoms. Gladion admired their beauty, and he wished he was there with him. For now, he let himself pretend that he truly was there, walking beside Hau, nodding quietly as Hau continued to chatter endlessly about how it had been his childhood dream to see these in person…

“Gladion? Gladion! Were you listening to me?”

Gladion blinked, and the illusion was broken.

He wasn’t with Hau in Japan. He was on his couch in his apartment, in France.

And he suddenly didn’t want to be here any longer.

“Sorry, repeat what you said?” Gladion sheepishly scratched the back of his head.

“Ehe, guess the beauty of the sakura got to you too, yeah? What I said was that...I wish I could send an envelope full of petals to you. But Sun said it was illegal to pick the blossoms, so...maybe I’ll just post something else instead.”

“Don’t send food, it’ll go bad,” Gladion reminded, “but you don’t have to get me anything, honestly…”

“I gotta!” Hau looked determined. “Because you’re all the way over there and I haven’t even met up with you once! I’m with Sun now, I’ve met with Lillie and Moon and Kiawe and...uh...lots of others, but we…” His voice faltered, and then became quieter. “We’ve never even gotten the chance to just sit down together, face to face, and talk. It’s not the same as chatting over a video call or a phone call, you know?”

“...I know what you mean. I do. I’ve just been so busy, with work and my mom and...writing. I’ve been writing.”

Hau perked up. “Can I read what you’ve been writing, when we see each other again?”

Gladion gave a little smile. “Sure. I’ve been submitting my writing to some publishers and magazines, but so far there’s been no news, so…”

“I’m sure your work is amazing. They just don’t know talent when they see it.” Hau gave him a thumbs up. “So don’t give up! Maybe you’ll publish a book, and you’ll really change the world. Make it better. Just like you said you wanted to do.”

“Maybe,” Gladion repeated, and he believed what he said. “Thank you, Hau. For...believing in me.”

And Hau gave him his widest smile, and Gladion found himself, again, smiling because of him.

 

* * *

 

 

Gladion received a ton of pictures shortly after ending the video call. Most were just silly selfies, or gorgeous photos of the scenery - there was even a panorama - but there was one picture that stood out the most to him.

One picture that made him stop and stare for a while, made him set it as his phone wallpaper so he could gaze at it each day.

An impromptu, candid picture, where Hau was turning to look at the camera, as if someone had called his name and he had reacted to them. He was still smiling, as usual, but it was the more casual kind of smile, rather than those brilliant, full-blown smiles that he usually gave. There was a particularly low branch of cherry blossoms near his head, and some petals had coincidentally gotten in his hair.

 **"Did Sun take this one?"** he asked.

 **"Yup!!!"** came the reply.  **"What do you think?"**

He hesitated for a brief moment before replying,  **"It's a nice photo. You look nice too."**

It made him grin when a stream of heart emojis appeared on the screen.

**"uwu thank you"**

**"Can you not use 'uwu', please?"**

**"UWU"**

**"Hau. Stop.** **"**

**"U W U"**

It wasn't actually that hilarious or anything, but Gladion realised he was  _giggling_. Why was he doing that?

Maybe he just felt that way, whenever Hau was involved, even just a little. His infectious smiles and laughter, his voice, his encouraging words. Maybe being with Hau was sort of like being with Lillie or Silvally - they all made him smile and laugh and actually want to be affectionate.

 _'Maybe it's more than that,'_ a little voice in his head whispered, but he immediately silenced it. But he knew it was right. 

Maybe it was the reason why he and Hau seemed to have the same wish.

To meet each other again, face to face.


End file.
